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June, 2017 − Rev. 11 Publication Order Number:

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Challenges of ImplementingIndustrial IoT Technology

AbstractThe Internet of Things (IoT) is the culmination of

progression that has been made within a number of differentinterrelated technology disciplines in recent years. Throughmajor advances in wireless connectivity and sensing, as wellas support given by processing, control and powermanagement devices, the stage is now set for IoT to startseeing widespread deployment in both consumer andindustrial spheres. The purpose of the following white paperis to look specifically at Industrial IoT (IIoT). It will describethe commercial dynamics and market trends that aredefining this particular sector. In addition, it will give detailsof the various design issues being faced by engineers as theylook to develop and implement IIoT systems, then explainhow these challenges may be overcome.

Keywords: IoT, IIoT, IDK, Cloud Data, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS,Sensors, Actuators, Connectivity, IoT Operating System,IoT Protocols, LPWA, SIGFOX.

IntroductionIndustry analyst firm Market & Markets estimates that by

2022 the global IIoT business will be worth around$195 billion annually. There are many factors that will drivethis growth, but the principle ones are for companies to beable to:• Gain from more efficient working practices − through

access to and subsequent analysis of the large quantitiesof data derived.

• Respond quicker to incidents that might occur whichcould otherwise have costly or dangerous outcomes −such as a fault arising or some deviation in an industrialprocess.

• Be notified more quickly for places where maintenance(or other preemptive measures) might be required toprevent faults that could impact operations in the longterm.

IIoT can enable higher degrees of automation and thusraise productivity. It can also help companies to broaden thearray of services they can offer, heighten safety, avoiddowntime (and the financial expense associated with this),better control their assets and also become moreecologically responsible. As we will see there arefundamental technologies that will form the basis of IIoTimplementations − these are connectivity, sensors andactuators.

Figure 1. The Possibilities IIoT

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ConnectivityPredictions about the number of connected IoT nodes that

will be in operation vary quite considerably. Table 1 givesa detailed summary of the forecasts being made by differentorganizations. The most ambitious suggest there will be50 billion by 2020, while others claim 20 to 30 billion isa more realistic figure by that stage (though they expect the50 billion mark to still be reached or even surpassed, justfurther into the next decade). What is certain is that there willbe tens of billions of objects being connected to the Internetover the course of the next few years and around 50% ofthese will be for some type of industrial application. There

are a multitude of different connectivity technologiesoffered that will support IIoT. Some of these are alreadyestablished, while others are still in the process of emerging.They include traditional industrial wireline protocols (suchas CAN bus, FieldBus, Hart, KNX, Ethernet, MBUS andPLC), as well as wireless protocols. The wirelessconnectivity options can be categorized as eithercellular-based ones that cover the wide area network (likeLTE−M and in the future, 5G) or short-range power-efficientones (like Wi-Fi®, LoRa�, ZigBee®, Z-Wave® and BLE�)for ‘last mile’ implementation.

Table 1. NUMBER OF CONNECTED IoT NODES BY 2020

Organization IoT Nodes

Business Insider 24 billion

Gartner 21 billion

IDC 30 billion

Goldman Sachs 28 billion

GSMA 50 billion

Figure 2. Breakdown in Prevalence of IoT Connectivity Technologies

ActuatorsIIoT presents an opportunity to control different

mechanisms remotely via cloud-based automationinfrastructures, including activating lighting, driving ofmotors, opening/closing actions, etc. The advent of smart

lighting and smart motor control will have real tangiblebenefits to society, in terms of greater convenience andmarked energy savings. Li-Fi� communication technology,for example, is now permitting the ability to interface withwhat were previously conventional standalone actuators.

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SensorsLikewise, the capture of data through instrumentation will

be pivotal to making system deployments effective.Different sensor technologies can be employed in an IIoTcontext, providing valuable insight − on the temperature atwhich an industrial process is being conducted (to ensurethat it is running correctly), the ambient light and moisturelevels in a large commercial greenhouse (to check thatconditions are correct to allow maximum crop yield), ornitrogen-oxide content in gas leaving the exhaust flu of anindustrial boiler. Outside the industrial engineering sectorother types of sensors can be utilized for different tasks thatare still categorized under the IIoT umbrella. In buildingautomation, passive infrared devices can be used to providemotion detection, for controlling the lighting/heating oralternatively for security purposes. In healthcare, sensortechnologies will allow remote monitoring of parameters,such as blood glucose levels, etc. This will result insignificant improvements in the quality of patients’ lives, asthey will be able to spend less time in hospitals/clinics.

For sensor connected networks, the power consumptionof the object is likely be significantly less than will be thecase for connected actuators, hence battery-powered objectswill represent the vast majority of deployments. This islikely to prove critical to IIoT proliferation, as manyapplications will rely on sensors that have been deployed inremote locations (and therefore sending engineers out intothe field to regularly replace batteries will beuneconomical). The power consumption and connectionrange of the radio interface will potentially representa significant impact on the lifespan of the battery (so BLE

and other ultra-low power RF protocols will be preferable).In some cases energy harvesting will be employed to takecare of the power supply problem, enabling batteries tosimply be dispensed with.

Practicalities of IIoT DeploymentIn addition to the limitations placed on IIoT hardware due

to battery-powered operation, the electronics located at eachnode is likely to have other constraints. The large number ofnodes deployed could mean that low bill-of-materials costsneed to be adhered to. Furthermore, available space may alsobe restricted. These factors mean that often IIoT objects willgenerally have only limited microprocessor and memoryresources that they can draw upon. Consequently, theirconstruction must be as sleek as possible, with no excessfunctionality incorporated.

Cloud Services & Supporting InfrastructureThe cloud will be the foundation upon which IIoT data

processing and storage activities are reliant. In the realm ofconsumer IoT, the data that is captured and transported to thecloud may be required for marketing analysis (for example),without any subsequent involvement from the user. Incontrast to this, however, IIoT-based data (concerningindustrial processes, confidential medical records, etc.),must be managed under extremely strict control proceduresand with authorization of the owner of this data. To mitigatethe potential threat of industrial espionage, hacking or evenacts of terrorism, a fully secured service offering needs to beemployed − this can either be software as a service (SaaS) orplatform as a service (PaaS) based.

Figure 3. Itemization of Service Offered per Category [Source: VentureBeat]

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The revenue that IoT/IIoT services will constitute is farbigger than both hardware and connectivity elementscombined and is also growing at a much faster rate (this isillustrated in Figure 4). As we will see, the hardware andcloud service providers looking to serve the IIoT market areonly focusing on their own established area of expertise.This is having a detrimental effect on the uptake of IIoTtechnology though, as the hardware and softwaredevelopment aspects have to be addressed separately. The‘silo’ approach that is currently prevalent has to be alteredconsiderably. What the industry needs instead is anall-encompassing solution that deals with both these keyelements together − so that hardware engineers have the

warranted support, but at the same time software developersare able to create the cloud-based apps that will accompanythat hardware. Another consideration is the versatility of thehardware itself. Currently semiconductor vendors supplygeneric single board development solutions with a certainset of sensor and connectivity functions built in. This leaveslittle scope for engineers to optimize the system inaccordance with their particular application criteria though.Far more appealing would be a flexible platform, where theycould choose from a broader array of different sensor,actuator and connectivity options, just adding the ones thatthey actually required.

Figure 4. Comparison of Projected Revenues Relating to Services with Rest of IoT Ecosystem[Source: ABI Research]

ON Semiconductor’s IoT Development Kit (IDK)ON Semiconductor recognized early on that something

needed to be done about the disjointed situation that existsbetween the hardware and software aspects of IoT/IIoTdevelopment. Its technical staff were given the job ofattempting to bridge this gap − bringing a solution to marketthat covered both distinctive types of competency. Theobjective was to provide hardware engineers (who had littleknowledge of cloud-based software development) with anout-of-the-box solution via which they could access cloudbased services, while at the same time giving moreexperienced embedded software experts provision tochange to another cloud service provider or to develop theirown proprietary services from the ground up.

The result of this endeavor was the ON SemiconductorIoT Development Kit (IDK). This presents engineers witha ready-to-use single platform that exhibits a high degreeflexibility, upon which the demands of both hardware andsoftware are fully accommodated. Based on the company’s

highly sophisticated NCS36510 system-on-chip (SoC) witha 32-bit ARM® Cortex® M3 processor core, it has all thenecessary hardware resources for constructing highlyeffective, differentiated IIoT systems, along witha comprehensive software framework to attend tointerfacing with the cloud.

By attaching different daughter cards to the IDKbaseboard, a wealth of connectivity (Wi-Fi, SIGFOX�,Ethernet, 802.15.4 MAC-based radios enabling ZigBee andThread protocols, etc.), sensor (motion, ambient light,proximity, heart rate, etc.) and actuator (with stepper andbrushless motor driving, plus the ability to drive LEDstrings) options can be added to the system. This means thatcompromises do not have to be made and the most suitabletechnology can be chosen.

The Eclipse-based integrated development environment(IDE) that accompanies this hardware consists of a C++compiler, debugger, code editor and a collection ofapplication-related libraries. Through the use of the Carriots

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PaaS, it was possible to give engineers the functionalityneeded to interface with the cloud, but without putting anymajor restrictions on the scope of their creativity. It allowsthem to configure the IDK in the way that best fits with theirparticular application, but simultaneously still benefitingfrom powerful security features and real-time diagnostics/

analytics. The IDK provides a highly configurable platformthat will help engineers to achieve their system design goalswhile accelerating development timeframes − therebygetting systems deployed much quicker and with greatercost effectiveness.

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